like you can come with me and get acquainted with Diana.”
Anne rose to her feet, with clasped hands, the tears still glistening on her
cheeks; the dish towel she had been hemming slipped unheeded to the floor.
“Oh, Marilla, I’m frightened—now that it has come I’m actually frightened.
What if she shouldn’t like me! It would be the most tragical disappointment of
my life.”
“Now, don’t get into a fluster. And I do wish you wouldn’t use such long
words. It sounds so funny in a little girl. I guess Diana ‘ll like you well enough.
It’s her mother you’ve got to reckon with. If she doesn’t like you it won’t matter
how much Diana does. If she has heard about your outburst to Mrs. Lynde and
going to church with buttercups round your hat I don’t know what she’ll think of
you. You must be polite and well behaved, and don’t make any of your startling
speeches. For pity’s sake, if the child isn’t actually trembling!”
Anne was trembling. Her face was pale and tense.
“Oh, Marilla, you’d be excited, too, if you were going to meet a little girl you
hoped to be your bosom friend and whose mother mightn’t like you,” she said as
she hastened to get her hat.
They went over to Orchard Slope by the short cut across the brook and up the
firry hill grove. Mrs. Barry came to the kitchen door in answer to Marilla’s
knock. She was a tall black-eyed, black-haired woman, with a very resolute
mouth. She had the reputation of being very strict with her children.
“How do you do, Marilla?” she said cordially. “Come in. And this is the little
girl you have adopted, I suppose?”
“Yes, this is Anne Shirley,” said Marilla.
“Spelled with an E,” gasped Anne, who, tremulous and excited as she was,
was determined there should be no misunderstanding on that important point.
Mrs. Barry, not hearing or not comprehending, merely shook hands and said
kindly:
“How are you?”
“I am well in body although considerable rumpled up in spirit, thank you
ma’am,” said Anne gravely. Then aside to Marilla in an audible whisper, “There
wasn’t anything startling in that, was there, Marilla?”
Diana was sitting on the sofa, reading a book which she dropped when the
callers entered. She was a very pretty little girl, with her mother’s black eyes and
hair, and rosy cheeks, and the merry expression which was her inheritance from
her father.